"My wife's wondering what has become of you," Bradley puffed out among many other things, as he tried to keep up with Ogden's supple and light-footed gait. "And Jessie, too. She's home to-morrow—just back from Evanston. You come out on the eleven fifty-five, and we'll have an early dinner, and that will leave enough of the afternoon to make things worth while. And we'll show you that spring is a little nearer at hand than you'd suspect in town. Your first spring here?"
"Yes."
"Pretty bad, ain't it?"
"Worse than Boston," said George, in a tone implying that nothing further could be added.
At the next corner Bradley paused, detaining him for a moment with a friendly hand.
"Sunday noon, then. You provide the dalliance and we'll see to the primroses. Care anything for 'em?"
"Oh, yes, indeed."
"Good thing; can't have chrysanthemums all the year round. Well, good-by. Jessie will drive down for you in the buggy."
"I'll be there," called Ogden, as they drifted apart in the thickening crowd.
He had reached the point where he felt it would be a relief to cut away from town and everything in it—the bustle, the uproar, the filth, the routine of the bank, the complications of the Brainards, the entanglements of the Ogdens. It was a simple thing to do—only so many miles of flimsy and shabby shanties and back views of sheds and stables; of grimy, cindered switch-yards, with the long flanks of freight-houses and interminable strings of loaded or empty cars; of dingy viaducts and groggy lamp-posts and dilapidated fences whose scanty remains called to remembrance lotions and tonics that had long passed their vogue; of groups of Sunday loungers before saloons, and gangs of unclassifiable foreigners picking up bits of coal along the tracks; of muddy crossings over roads whose bordering ditches were filled with flocks of geese; of wide prairies cut up by endless tracks, dotted with pools of water, and rustling with the dead grasses of last summer; then suburbs new and old—some in the fresh promise of sidewalks and trees and nothing else, others unkempt, shabby, gone to seed; then a high passage over a marshy plain, a range of low wooded hills, emancipation from the dubious body known as the Cook County Commissioners—and Hinsdale.